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Louisville mulls a takeover of popular downtown patios

City has set aside $200,000 in 2013 to assume control of program

By John Aguilar Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
10/28/2012 03:00:00 PM MDT

If you go:

What: 2012 Main Street patio program update

When: 6:30 p.m. Nov. 7

Where: Louisville City Hall, 749 Main St.

LOUISVILLE -- The question of what role city government should play in the vitality of downtown Louisville will take center stage next week when a discussion on the future of the popular summertime patios on Main Street comes before the public.

The city is considering taking over the patio program, which for the past four years has been run by the Louisville Downtown Business Association, and wants the public's input on the best way to proceed.

Options include providing permanent space for outdoor seating on the sidewalks between Spruce and Walnut streets or installing hardier modular patios on that block on a seasonal basis.

City staff members will give a public presentation on the options Nov. 7 and then present the City Council with a final recommendation on how to proceed.

Diana Trettin, Louisville's capital improvement projects manager, said the existing wooden patios have a "fairly short life span" and can be easily damaged on installment or take-down. They are also bulky and difficult to store, she said.

"It's not an inexpensive endeavor," Trettin said, noting that the business association asked the city for help managing the patios. "The council would like to see them out there."

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The new modular patios, a prototype of which sits in front of City Hall for the public to see, are made mostly of metal and a long-lasting Brazilian hardwood. Unlike the existing patios, Trettin said the replacement patios can be easily assembled and taken apart.

The city set aside $200,000 in its 2013 budget to assume control of the patio program but hasn't decided yet whether to do so.

DBA board member Deb Krueger said when the patios were first installed in 2009, they were put in on an experimental basis. Since then, she said, they have proven their worth, drawing diners by the thousands, injecting vitality into the historic commercial district and helping make downtown Louisville the envy of many Colorado municipalities.

"We were willing to stick our necks out and try it out as a pilot program," Krueger said. "We were willing to prove to the city that this is what the patrons and the downtown needs."

But she said the cost of putting them in and taking them out, in addition to maintenance and replacement, has become too costly for her organization. The downtown business association has spent a minimum of $50,000 since 2009 running and maintaining the patio program.

Mayor Pro Tem Hank Dalton said, without a doubt, the patios have been part and parcel of the revitalization of downtown Louisville.

"People do like them, and they do create a very different dynamic in the summertime," he said. "People's pulses quicken in the spring when they see those things come out."

The decision facing the city brings up basic issues of what government is responsible for funding and what the private sector -- the half-dozen restaurants on Main Street are the most direct beneficiaries of the patios -- should shoulder, Dalton said. The self-professed fiscal conservative acknowledged that Louisville does have an interest in fostering economic development but needs to remember it's using taxpayer money.

"It's real money -- for me, it has to be weighed pretty carefully," he said. "We're going to have to evaluate the benefit the city derives from it against the cost of it."

Jacques Blanchard, owner of The Louisville Rex, said the city gets a nice boost in sales tax revenues when he manages to fill the patio space in front of his movie theater-themed eatery with diners. Over time, he said, the patios will pay for themselves on that basis alone.

"The patios are absolutely in the city's interest," he said. "It gives me 25 extra seats, which generate sales tax revenues for Louisville."

Then there are the intangible benefits -- the lively streetscape, the sense of vitality -- that patio dining provides Louisville, Blanchard said. He said the difference between downtown during patio season and after patio season is "staggering."

Louisville's downtown patios will be removed the first week of November.

"We go from having an extremely pretty street -- a kind of restaurant district -- with lots of charm to just being another street with cars parked on either side," he said.

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